Productivity equals profitability.

I bet you’re already using a range of modern apps to run your business in various ways to be as profitable as possible. But do you have everything you need to stay productive?

Are you stuck with lesser, outdated software? Is there a new way of doing business out there or simply a better way?

Check out the following productivity apps that will make your small business hum.

Asana

This well-known app is a direct competitor to the likes of Trello and Monday. It’s also one of the best things you can do for your business’ productivity.

“Asana is the work management platform teams use to stay focused on the goals, projects, and daily tasks that grow business.” – Asana

What’s the point? Managing tasks, time and people. It’s the perfect business tool to grow with your business and ensure your entire operation works smoothly and productively.

Using Asana, you can create cards for tasks, assign employees, set dates, add files and move these cards through a workflow or calendar to ensure visibility, timeliness and delivery.

Benefits and features:

  • Project management
  • Workflow management
  • Task monitoring
  • Calendar
  • To do lists

Agorapulse

Handling social media accounts is a sneakily time-consuming task. With multiple accounts all needing content and multiple threads of comments to reply to, you could spend all day switching from Instagram to Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn and back again – never getting anything done.

Enter Agorapulse.

With competitors like Hootsuite and Buffer, this extremely useful app is used by the likes of McDonald’s and Pepsi and co-ordinates all of your social accounts into one easy panel, with full access and control.

Would you like to:

  • Post the same message across all channels in one go?
  • Reply to different social media threads in one screen?
  • Create reports on social activity?
  • Schedule and automate social posts ahead of time?

Of course you would. As social media marketing becomes even more widespread and essential, you can find yourself wasting time through a lack of automation.

Professionalise your approach to social media. Save inordinate amounts of time and automate as many unnecessary actions as possible with a tool like Agorapulse.

TeamViewer

This one is a life saver for those who work remotely in teams and need access to people, remote files, shared screens and video chat.

It’s an all in one super tool perfect for virtual meetings, sharing and communicating between disparate teams of up to 300 people. Rare for such a tool, it doesn’t even matter if your team is working from different devices and platforms such as Windows, iOS or various mobile devices – you can all still work seamlessly together.

Some key functions of TeamViewer:

  • Full access to remote devices
  • Screen sharing
  • Virtual whiteboard
  • Web meetings with audio, video and text chat
  • Record meetings for later
  • Compatible with a wide range of devices and platforms

So, if you’re doing business with colleagues or collaborators in different locations, on different devices and with separate files, do yourself a favour and upgrade from the ‘Skypes’ of the world to a more comprehensive productivity app like TeamViewer.

RescueTime

Ok, here’s to all the procrastinators out there: your time needs to be rescued!

The crux of productivity, in any arena, is time management.

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst” – William Penn.

If managing your time effectively and efficiently is an issue (or even if you think you have this dialled) you should consider grabbing an app like RescueTime to ensure you are spending your minutes wisely and productively.

RescueTime is a time management app which maps and tracks exactly how you spend your time on your digital devices.

Everything you do online, on projects and in apps will be automatically logged and categorised in order for you to see, at a glance, exactly how you really spend your time – not just what you think you spend your time on.

You may be surprised. This is an excellent way to gauge true productivity.

Rescue time will help you understand:

  • Where you’re spending your time across your devices
  • Which apps and websites are most distracting
  • How much time you spend in meetings, answering emails, and on social media
  • At what time you’re at your most and least productive
  • How your smartphone usage impacts your true productivity

To learn more about digital distractions check out our article on how to do a digital detox.